Chapter 3
1 John 2:1-6
1 John 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Immediately after introducing his readers to the Word of Life in chapter one, John began a discourse concerning humanity’s problem with sin. He set up three scenarios on how Christians should never consider regarding how we are to deal with our own sin. Each scenario stated a potential error in perception followed by how to correct that perception. He outlined how Christians might want to ignore that we are sinning (make excuse or blame someone else) or say there is no such thing as a sin (no laws to break) or perhaps just say we aren’t sinning (deny our sin). John pointed out that each of these perceptions are wrong, as we cannot just walk away from sin. John wants us to understand that sin is a serious subject.
John continues this discourse in chapter two. In the first verse the Greek word translated as “little children” is the same word teachers would use to address children at school and he will use it six more times in this epistle. Continuing with tthe subject of sin, John says he is writing this letter so that his readers may not sin. Possibly under the category of “easier said than done,” several of the epistle writers would remind us that we have all the resources available to us to say ‘no’ to sin and that includes temptation (for example see Romans 6:12-18 and James 4:7). So is John saying there is no excuse for our sins? Yes, that is exactly what he is saying, but he also knows that we are still sinners.
John tells us that if we do sin we have an advocate that will defend us before God (read also Romans 8:34; 1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 7:25). The aorist tense of that phrase implies a strong possibility that we will sin (and of course we do). What John is presenting may be somewhat reminiscent of what goes on in a modern-day courtroom. In most courts there is a judge, a prosecutor or plaintiff, a defense attorney, and of course the person or defendant who is being tried for their alleged crime. John is essentially saying that God the Father is the Judge; Satan is the accuser (see Revelation 12:9-10 and Zechariah 3:1), we are the defendants and Jesus is our defense attorney.
1 John 2:2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
You might be asking how Jesus could defend us? John explains how by using an unusual term, known in the English as ‘propitiation’ (or hilasmós in the Greek), variations of this term were also used by Paul (see Romans 3:23-25; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 and Colossians 1:20). To better understand this term and how it connects to the Old Testament, provided below is an excerpt from, “The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament.”
2434. ἱλασμός hilasmós; gen. hilasmoú, masc. noun from hiláskomai (2433), to propitiate, expiate. Propitiation. The benefit of Christ’s blood for the sinner in the acceptance by the Father. Hilasmós refers to Christ as the one who not only propitiates but offers Himself as the propitiatory sacrifice. He is both the sacrifice and the officiating High Priest (John 1:29, 36; 1 Cor. 5:7; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10:14; 1 Pet. 1:19; Rev. 5:6, 8). The sacrifice of Jesus Christ in shedding His blood, both as the victim and the high priest, is indicated by the use of the basic verb hiláskomai (2433) in Heb. 2:17: “To make reconciliation for the sins of the people,” which means to pay the necessary price for the expiation and removal of the sins of the people. This was parallel to that which the high priest did, but it was perfect and a far better sacrifice in that it was permanent and unrestricted. Tó hilastḗrion, the mercy seat (Heb. 9:5), was the lid or cover of the ark of the covenant on which the high priest sprinkled the blood of an expiatory victim (Ex. 25:17–22; Lev. 16:11, 13–15). The use of all these words must, therefore, be connected with the blood of Christ shed on the cross. The cross was the place of expiation (the mercy seat) and Christ was the sacrifice whose blood (His sacrificial death) was sprinkled on it.
The periphrastic use of the verb is found also in Heb. 8:12, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” The expression here is híleōs ésomai (híleōs [2436], merciful; ésomai, [fut. act. indic. of eimí {1510}, to be], I shall be), “I shall be merciful” (a.t.). The Lord Jesus is declaring here that He, through the sacrifice of Himself, will become the means of the removal of the sins of His people and of their status of unrighteousness or enmity with God.
Hilasmós, found only in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10, is equivalent to hilastḗrion (2435) as used by Paul in Rom. 3:25. It is the means of putting away sin and establishing righteousness. God is never presented as changing His mind toward the sinner or the sin that estranged the sinner from Him. Man is never said to be able to appease God with any of his offerings, as in the heathen religions where man offered gifts in an attempt to accomplish this.
In the NT, we find man incapable of offering anything to placate God because He is a righteous God. For Him to accept sinful man, it was necessary for God, not man, to do something to deliver man from his sin. This is the reason why, in 1 John 2:1, we find Jesus Christ presented as the righteous One. God demands that the payment for sin be made once and for all. It is Christ Himself, therefore, who becomes hilasmós, the means which is acceptable to God to satisfy His righteousness or His justice. This does not merely appease God but provides the means for the redemption of man. Christ is the propitiation which supplies the method of deliverance from our sin and, being reconciled to God, we are acceptable for fellowship with God. Christ became the vicarious and expiatory sacrifice for our sins. John adds that this sacrifice of Christ was a historical event. Jesus Christ does not need to shed his blood and die again for any new believers because it is all–encompassing. Nobody’s sins have ever been permanently removed in any other way except by means of the Lord Jesus Christ and His death on Calvary’s cross. OT sacrifices pointed toward Christ’s sacrifice, which is an objective accomplishment, a finished work for the whole world as a basis from which individual forgiveness and cleansing from sin proceeds.
The virtue of the propitiation extends beyond the subjective experience of those who actually are made partakers of grace. 1 John 2:2 presents the propitiation of Christ as vividly personal: “He is our propitiation” (a.t.). The life of Christ as well as His death is involved, His person as well as His work. The use of the word hilasmós by John refers not only to the process of the atonement, but also to its final achievement as a fact: “He is the propitiation”; “His blood is cleansing us from all sin” (a.t. [1 John 1:7]). It is more than a completed act. The propitiation abides as a living, present energy residing in the personality of Christ Himself. According to John, therefore, the propitiation is the cleansing from sin rather than merely the work of justification before God or the acceptance of the sinner as if he had never sinned.
Paul associates Christ’s propitiation as more closely connected with the righteousness of the Law. In John, love and propitiation become interchangeable realities necessary to one another, with one explaining the other, even lost in one another. John defines love by propitiation, and propitiation by love: “In this have we come to know what love is, that He for us laid down His life” (a.t. [1 John 3:16); “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). When John speaks of God as love, he refers to Him as the means of reconciliation of man to God. See hiláskomai (2433), to propitiate, to reconcile to oneself; hilastḗrion (2435), propitiator, mercy seat; híleōs (2436), mercy, merciful, propitious.
Syn.: katallagē; (2643), reconciliation.
Ant.: katára (2671), curse; ará (685), imprecation, curse; anáthema (331), accursed.[1]
John says that Jesus is our propitiation for the sins of the whole world (See John 1:29; 3:16; 4:42; 1 John 4:14). This verse is often misunderstood; it is not a reference to some form of blanket salvation that is automatically applied for all people without accepting Jesus or seek forgiveness for their sins. Even though salvation is a free gift, not all people are gong to accept it. Everyone still needs to believe in Jesus alone. John is instructing us that Jesus died for all sin, lets put that in perspective, that is, all sin that was done (past), sin that is being done (present), and for those sins that will be done (future). It is only when we consider that Jesus who was made to be sin (that would be everyone’s sin, that’s right, all sin, read 2 Corinthians 5:21) can we begin to see a tiny glimmer of the amount of suffering He willingly did for us. We simply cannot imagine or understand what He went through for us!
1 John 2:3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
After writing about Jesus and about the serious nature of sin, possibly thinking that our sin is too offensive to God, John wants to reassure his readers that they can know that they have salvation and a relationship with Jesus. John presents two tests for us to verify our relationship with Him. The phrase, “we have come to know Him” is one Greek word (ginōskō) used as a perfect tense verb that essentially looks at a past action (in our case accepting Jesus as our Savior) that has continuing results in the present. The first way for us to see if we belong to Jesus is by asking ourselves if we are keeping His commandments (see also 1 John 4:21; 5:3). Jesus on a number of occasions spoke about the importance of keeping His commandments (read John 13:34; 14:15; 15:10).
We can be confused by the word ‘commandments’ as we may typically think John is referring to the Ten Commandments. John is referring to those things that Jesus taught. When Jesus was asked which was the most important commandment (see Matthew 22:34-40 or Mark 12:28-33) He replied with one from Deuteronomy 6:5 followed by one from Leviticus 19:18. Neither one of those verses are from what we call the Ten Commandments given in Exodus 20. Paul twice referred to Jesus’ teachings as “Christ’s Law” (see Galatians 6:2 and 1 Corinthians 9:21). Perhaps the most important commandment that Jesus gave us was the Great Commission (read Matthew 28:18-20). Jesus said that we were to make disciples and teach them to observe all that He commanded them. It is imperative for every Christian to know what Jesus taught.
John’s response to the problem of saying that we know Him but do not follow His commandments we are lying to ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we do not know His Word how can we know what to do or follow His teachings? As Christians we need to be continually pursuing His Word so that the truth can be found in us. John says if we keep His Word, the unconditional love of God will be made complete in us.
John continues with the second part of the test, which asks if we abide in Him (an important instruction from Jesus, read John 15:4-7) we ought to walk in the same way He walked (see Matthew 11:28-30). Jesus set the standard of life for us, no, we can’t be God, but He certainly provided a doable model to follow (see Philippians 4:13). In summary John is saying that if we know God we would know His Word and apply His Word in everything we do, as well as use it to influence how we think (our worldview), we would truly be abiding in Jesus and our external actions would give testimony to that inner truth. Can God’s truth be found in you?
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[1] Zodhiates, S. (2000). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.